Upcoming feature to use local Zazzle domains in links

Edit: V3.4 now released!

In the next release (3.4) of NiftyGridZPro, we’re introducing a feature that could double your referral success! How? By using local Zazzle domains.

You see, if a visitor from say, England, visits your site, clicks one of your links and goes to zazzle.com – if they end up moving to and then buying from zazzle.co.uk you DON’T get any referal commission. Yup that’s right, none.

So what the new feature does, if you switch it on, is to find out automatically which country they’re from and then swap that Zazzle domain for .com in all product links in grids.

Check this grid out: If you’re from outside the US, all links in the grid will be for your country’s local Zazzle domain. Hover over one and look in the bottom left of your browser to see…

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Advanced feature?

It’s an advanced feature in that you need to understand the repurcussions. You see, not all products are available on the international domains (i.e. not .com).

For example, the entire range of food items (chocolates, party pops, hot sauce etc) aren’t available on international domains.

When this happens, NiftyGridZPro will NOT substitute the local domain for .com – it’ll leave that product’s links alone. That way you still have a chance at a sale.

Restriction – six or fewer items

On large product grids (lots of items) this can slow things down a lot. Until Zazzle provides a clean way of finding out if a product is available on an international domain, we have to go round the houses a bit. And this takes time.

What do we do? For each product in your grid, NiftyGridZPro requests the product page from Zazzle. If it gets back a page with a title of “error”, then it’s not available on the local domain of the visitor. Waiting for Zazzle to return the page is what takes the time.

For this reason NiftyGridZPro will ony allow the international domains feature on product grids with six or fewer items.

Do you display prices?

The only other fiddly bit you need to know about is as follows. It’s because the only prices NiftyGridZPro gets given by Zazzle are in US dollars:

Picture this scene: If you choose to display the price line and your visitor is from, say, Denmark, it would be confusing for them to see the price shown in US dollars, wouldn’t it?

So, even if you have the price line set to display, NiftyGridZPro will switch it off if a visitor’s local domain isn’t the .com one. That now makes sense: the Danish visitor will see no reference to price but the one from, say Wisconsin, will.

From the US? 🇺🇸

By the way, if you’re from the US and want to see it working, unless you take steps, you won’t notice any difference. That’s because .com get swapped out for .com (stupid computers!)

Instead, try using a private browsing window or a vpn – a virtual private network. (Do a Google search for vpn if you need to.) As long as it makes you appear as if you’re from outside the US you’ll be able to see the effect.

Some final points on use

It’s a global setting in your Admin Panel, off by default, which means that when you upgrade, there’ll be no change to your existing product grids.

Switching it on or off (and then saving) operates it in real time across all eligible product grids on your site. Eligible ones are those that don’t mention the setting in their shortcodes. If they do, their setting overrides the Admin Panel setting.

So to switch it on or off for a particular grid, use the option in its shortcode like this: use_local_zsite=1 for on and use_local_zsite=0 for off.

If you’re using slot messages (aka ad injection), any links to zazzle.com will also be changed as per this setting if they get used in a product grid.

V3.2 Released – new Google Ads feature

We’re pleased to announce the release of V3.2 of NiftyGridZPro, the gold standard WordPress plugin for Zazzle!

In this release you can now improve your earnings! And like every other aspect of NiftyGridZPro, it works on mobile too!

  • earn by displaying Google Ads from your Google Adsense account, globally across all (eligible) product grids
  • choose the balance between showing ads and showing your other global slot messages

When you’ve got it switched on, a random position (slot / cell) gets chosen in each (eligible) product grid and the ad is displayed there. But only if the roll of the dice says it should or you’ve got it set to always show.

setting up Google Ads
admin settings page: setting up a Google Ad

Goolge Ads are another type of global slot message and behave pretty much the same way. This means from one spot, you can control their display globally across your site, just like with the global slot messages.

You’ve got tons of flexibility in choosing when they’re shown, even being able to switch them on or off for a particular page/post’s product grid. Here’s one where we’ve forced the ad to appear all the time by using use_google_ad_code=9 in the shortcode (9 means always, 1 means rarely – it’s a scale from 1-9).

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See full details here in the FAQ and find out all there is about setting up and controlling your Google Ads and what makes a grid eligible.

Shortcode used

As usual, here’s the shortcode we used for the product grid above:

[niftygridzpro title_font_size="12px" title_alignment="center" cell_max_width="280px" cell_border_color="#aaaaaa" cell_background_color="#ffffff" cell_font_color="#333333" description_font_size="12px" description_alignment="center" description_length="0" include_product_names_in_titles=1 include_by_line=0 include_price_line=1 store_or_collection="hightonridley" search_term="pillows" sort_type="popularity" sort_direction="desc" page_size="6" page_number="1" product_background_color="#ffffff" allow_interaction=1 show_visitor_search_form=0 tracking_code="ngrdz_blg_pplr_outr_spc" use_google_ad_code=9]

Preparing for Halloween

With Halloween just round the corner, how prepared are you? Here’s a few ideas to get you started – with a Happy Halloween message from the bats…

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How to: Halloween Party Invitations for Kids

So, Halloween is almost upon us! Now is the time to think about all those kids’ parties being organized right now!

So the question answered for this post is “how do I make a product grid containing just invitations for kids’ halloween parties?”

It’s so easy to do with NiftyGridZPro just use the shortcode builder over on our sister site.

Here’s the grid I created with it and you’ll see that they’re all invitations for halloween parties for kids. Perfect, just what we want. Keep reading to see how I set it up.

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Search for:
How many to get (max 120):


…and here’s the shortcode for the grid

[niftygridzpro title_font_size="14px" title_alignment="center" cell_max_width="260px" cell_border_color="#aaaaaa" cell_background_color="#ffffff" cell_font_color="#333333" cell_vlink_color="#666666" description_font_size="12px" description_alignment="center" description_length="0" include_product_names_in_titles=1 include_by_line=1 include_tags_line=0 include_price_line=0 allow_interaction=1 product_grid_nav_font_size="20px" show_visitor_search_form=1 show_grid_navigation=1 fallback_filename="default-fallback-grid.html" grid_sort_method="pulledorder" grid_sort_direction="highlow" associate_id="238582202591969585" search_term="halloween kids" sort_type="popularity" sort_direction="desc" page_size="4" page_number="1" department_id="252145500430512226" product_background_color="ffffff" tracking_code="ngrdzwp_hlwn"]

I had to use the Zazzle Department finder, linked to under the More options->Advanced options in Step 1

screenshot showing the shortcode builder being used
Giving a search term and getting the department number for invites

I chose the display options I wanted and set a few other bits and bobs, copied the code it gave me and pasted it into my post. Done deal! 🙂

That was easy, wasn’t it? See the exact setup I used for it by following this link to the shortcode builder

Latest updates to NiftyGridZPro plugin

In the latest upgrade, there were some issues when using some of the advanced shortcode settings. They arose when using the shortcode options allow_interaction=1 and show_grid_navigation=1 and you were looking at multiple blog posts on a page.

The system got its knickers in a twist and the wrong product grid ended up responding to a visitor’s interaction on another.

All sorted now.

Just a reminder –

  • you can’t allow product grid interaction in a sidebar widget
  • you can only use one grid per post / page if you’re allowing interaction

The reason for these limitations is that the plugin uses the post / page id to recognise interaction is happening on the included product grid.

For widgets, they don’t have such an id so targeting the grid for interaction in a widget isn’t possible. You can still use a product grid in a widget, just not with interaction. Check out the sidebar on the left.

If you’re not sure what interaction is all about, check out the navigation and search form on this product grid:

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Search for:
How many to get (max 120):